Hepatitis Scare Spurs Administrators Into Action

Ever since federal officials announced last week that a batch of
strawberries contaminated with hepatitis A had been shipped to schools
in six states, school officials have been scrambling to vaccinate
students who may have been exposed to the highly contagious liver
disease.

So far, though, only Michigan residents are known to have been
stricken by the virus.

Following an outbreak in Calhoun County, Mich., last month, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture was able to trace the virus to a shipment of
frozen fruit that a California food processor had supplied. One hundred
students and eight school workers in the Marshall district had eaten
strawberry shortcake in their school lunches and taken ill.

Superintendent Louis Giannunzio reacted quickly. The district
erected three immunization clinics at schools where county health
officials administered 2,000 gamma-globulin shots in three days.

"When you've got 2,500 students, the potential for spreading is very
great," Mr. Giannunzio said last week. "We did [the vaccinations] to
cut down on the second wave."

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the illness can be controlled if the vaccine is administered within 14
days of exposure. A mild liver infection that is characterized by
nausea, vomiting, and fever, hepatitis A is most often transmitted by
handling or consuming fecal-contaminated food or water. Sometimes,
however, symptoms don't show up for weeks.

Mass Vaccinations

USDA officials charged last week that the contaminated fruit shipped
to the western Michigan district came from a San Diego packing company
that imported the berries from growers in Mexico. The agency warned
health officials in Arizona, California, Georgia, Iowa, and Tennessee,
which received tainted strawberries from the same batch, not to
distribute them. As a precaution, the USDA also asked nine other states
and the District of Columbia not to serve any strawberries linked to
the Southern California packing concern, Andrew & Williamson
Co.

USDA regulations require that school meals programs use commodities
from domestic producers. Any violation could warrant criminal
prosecution, officials said. Late last week, Fred L. Williamson, the
president of the food-processing company, resigned.

Meanwhile, dozens of school officials outside of Michigan who had
received the tainted fruit but who had yet to see infection rates rise,
mobilized for mass inoculations last week.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials were setting up
clinics in 18 schools, where 9,000 students and adults may have been
exposed to the virus from eating strawberry fruit cups served in school
lunches at the end of last month.

"This has never happened before on this scale," said Pat Spencer, a
spokesman for the nation's second-largest school district.

Still, he said that it could have been much worse: Three-fourths of
the 680,000 students in the district were on spring break the week the
potentially infected fruit cups were served.

Mr. Spencer and other school officials across the country said that
they want assurances from federal officials that the school food supply
is safe. "We don't have the facilities to test food constantly," Mr.
Spencer said. "You assume it's OK stuff."

At a press briefing in Washington last week, USDA officials said
that there are strict federal and state rules governing health and
safety practices in the nation's school lunch program, which serves 25
million children each day. Federal officials are still investigating at
what point in the process--from the fields to the lunch table--the
fruit was contaminated.

Tami Cline, the director of nutrition and education for the American
School Food Service Association in Alexandria, Va., said that schools
shouldn't fear that the food served in them is unsafe because such an
epidemic is extremely rare. "Americans should be very proud of their
food supply," she said.

Switching to Cherries

For many parents, however, the next few weeks are going to be an
anxious waiting game. Cindy Older, the president of the PTA council for
the Battle Creek, Mich., public schools--one of the hardest-hit
districts in the country--is watching to see if her 6th grader, who ate
the strawberry shortcake along with most of his classmates on
Valentine's Day, develops symptoms. The boy is past the 14-day point at
which the vaccine would stave off infection.

"We are all a little jumpy," Ms. Older said.

It's this wariness that has prompted a school meals director in Iowa
to keep a perfectly good batch of uninfected strawberries in a freezer
for the time being.

"They were on the menu for [this] week, but it's not worth putting
students through the stress of having strawberries," said Beth Hanna,
the director of nutrition services in the West Des Moines schools. "So
we switched to cherries."